Graeber / Wengrow 428: "[I]t is often simply assumed that strates begin when certain key functions of government--military, administrative and judicial--pass into the hands of full-time specialists. This makes sense if youa ccept the narrative that an agricultural surplus 'freed up' a significant portion of the population from the onerous responsibility of securing adequate amounts of food: a story that suggests the beginning of a process that would lead to our current global divsion of labour. Early states might have used this surplus largely to support full-time bureaucrats, priests, soldiers and the like, but--we are always reminded--its existence also allowed for full-time sculptors, pots, and astronomers"
However, many regimes break from this pattern: "almost none of the regimes [covered in a chapter in the book] were actually staffed by full-time specialists. Most obviously, none seem to have had a standing army [...] Priests and judges rarely worked full-time either; in fact, most government institutions in Old Kingdom Egypt, Shang Cina, Early Dynastic Mesopotamia or for that matter classical Athens were staffed by a rotating workforce whose members had other lives as managers of rural estages, traders, builders or any number of different occupations"